Workers of the U.S. firm Titan Salvage and Italian firm Micoperi work on the stranded Costa Concordia cruise ship near the harbour of Giglio Porto on June 25, 2012. / Vincenso Pinto, AFP/Getty Images

by Gene Sloan, USA TODAY

by Gene Sloan, USA TODAY

The Italian coast guard this week rescued five German tourists who had rented an inflatable boat to get close to the partially sunken Costa Concordia, the U.K,'s Sky News reports.

The news outlet says the small vessel was swamped by waves whipped up by storm force winds as it traveled between the Italian port of Santo Stefano and the location of the stricken Costa Cruises ship, which ran aground near the town of Giglio, Italy in early 2012. The tourists were suffering from the effects of the cold when the coast guard arrived, the news outlet says.

The rescued travelers were passengers on the Costa Magica, also a Costa Cruises ship. The Costa Magica had docked in Civitavecchia, near Rome, and the tourists had traveled to Santo Stefano for the day to view the Costa Concordia.

''It was a pretty stupid thing to do," Sky News quotes a coast guard official as saying of the attempt to take an inflatable boat out to the Costa Concordia. "They were lucky that it ended as it did; they could have quite easily sank."